1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a digital camcorder for recording or reproducing information by using a recording medium such as an optical disk or a magneto-optical disk.
2. Description of the Related Art
Hitherto, there has been proposed a device capable of reducing a waiting time until a disk as a recording medium becomes ready for recording after the power is turned on. For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-210002 discloses a device including a semiconductor memory for storing data, in which data is first stored in the memory after the power is turned on, and the data stored in the memory is read out and recorded on a disk after a disk recording means has become ready for recording data on the disk.
In such the device, since data is temporarily stored in the memory after the power is turned on, it is possible to reduce a waiting time until the disk becomes ready for recording.
The timing of start of storage on the memory is such that immediately after an electric circuit system on the camera side has become ready for operation, a storageable flag is set to “H” to start storing data in the memory. Upon completion of preparation process for the disk recording means (activation of a motor; pull-in of focus servo and tracking servo; access; automatic adjustment; disk type discrimination, and so on), recording on the disk is started.
Further, it is also disclosed therein that storage of data on the memory may be started only after a predetermined period of waiting time has elapsed after the storageable flag has become “H”.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-210002 further discloses a method for always storing and recording the latest data on the recording medium by writing the latest data over the existing data which has been already stored in the memory, in the case where it takes so long time to make the disk ready for recording that it is impossible to store all the data obtained after the start of storage, so as not to break the continuity of the recorded data.
Another conventional example is disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-317389.
Disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-317389 is a device in which after the power is turned on, activation of rotation of a disk, light emission with a laser, pull-in of focus servo and tracking servo, and various automatic adjustments of a servo system are performed. Then, the laser power is learned and the disk type is discriminated. Further, information to management of defects in a case of a rewritable disk, information to recordable positions in a case of a write-once disk, or the like is read out. Upon completion of the above startup process, a user is notified that the device is ready for recording. In this state, in response to an instruction given by the user to start recording, the device starts storing image pickup data in a memory through compression coding.
According to the method disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-210002, the device starts storing data in the semiconductor memory when the electric system of the camera becomes ready for operation, and the data starts to be recorded on the disk when the disk is made ready for recording.
However, according to such the method, when an unused disk is inserted, it is necessary to detect that the inserted disk is an unused disk and to perform formatting process thereof (initialization of defect information, logical format processing, padding processing on a predetermined area, and the like). Since it takes at least several seconds to perform the formatting process, the period of time until the disk is made ready for recording will be significantly changed.
Accordingly, unless the timing of the start of storage on the memory is set in consideration of the time necessary for the formatting process, the amount of data to be stored may exceed the capacity of the memory before the disk is made ready for recording, depending on the capacity of the memory. As a result, a part of the data which a user expects to be stored may be lost.
Also, according to the method disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-210002, data are sequentially stored in the memory, and when the stored data reaches the end of the memory, the oldest data stored at the beginning of the memory is written over by the latest data, to thereby continue storing data so as to always store the latest data. Accordingly, the continuity of the data recorded on the disk is not broken, but the data stored immediately after the start of storage in the memory is not recorded on the disk, with which the user may feel dissatisfied.
According to the method disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-317389, a user is notified that the activation of the disk is completed and the disk is ready for recording, and the memory starts storing data in response to the user's instruction. Therefore, in the case of an unused disk, it is possible to start storage in the memory while notifying the user that recording becomes possible after formatting. However, in this case, since the user cannot start image taking until the disk is made ready for recording, the waiting time until starting image taking is significantly increased.